Congress Takes Note of NTMA's Reshoring Efforts

It's good to see Congress take notice of "reshoring" - U.S. manufacturers bringing work back the United States from overseas.  NTMA has been talking about this issue for more than two years when we started to see previously off-shored work start coming back to the U.S. and to our members.  In fact, our Purchasing Fairs have promoted reshoring, providing a forum for hundreds of companies to connect with highly competitive and skilled domestic small to medium sized manufacturers.  Earlier this week, the House of Representatives' Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies held a hearing on "American Manufacturing and Job Repatriation" focused on reshoring.  The head of the NTMA-sponsored reshoring initiative, Harry Moser, testified at the hearing.  Read his testimony here.   The next Purchasing Fair will take place on June 13-14 at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, MI in conjunction with Amerimold Expo 2012.   

NTMA Members Featured in the Boston Globe

Congrats to NTMA members Tell Tool, O-D Tool & Cutter, The Custom Group and Boston Centerless for being featured in the Boston Globe on the shortage of skilled manufacturing workers.  Read it here.

Transforming for Competiveness

Welcome to the NTMA Chairman’s blog.  My goal for this blog is to keep members informed about NTMA programs and priorities.

For my introductory blogpost, I want to focus on the goals and priorities that I have established for my term as Chairman.

First a little bit about me.  I’m a second generation NTMA Member. My Dad; Don Atkins, started his business in 1963 and joined NTMA in 1967 and served numerous positions both locally and nationally in NTMA. Thanks to my Dad, I joined NTMA in 1979 and have been active in NTMA for 29 of my 33 year working career with three different NTMA companies

I am currently Vice President of Sales & Marketing of MIC Group headquartered in Brenham, Texas. We have four domestic and two international locations doing precision machining and mechanical/electrical assembly primarily serving the Oil & Gas Industry.

I want to acknowledge my predecessor as Chairman, Grady Cope, whose tireless efforts as Chairman has brought NTMA to national prominence and solidified our organization as a leading voice for manufacturers in this country.  I plan to build in Grady’s legacy by ensuring that critical challenges faced by our members, including a shrinking skilled workforce, tax reform and rising energy costs among other issues, receive the attention they deserve from elected officials in Washington and around the country.

If Grady’s theme of Manufacturing to America becomes reality as we believe it is, we as the manufacturing backbone of our nation must be prepared.  We are in an election year and we just heard our President use the word “manufacturing” 16 times in his State of the Union address.  We must be ready.  We must be “transforming” our companies and chapters to stay relevant on the current world stage.  Regardless of perception, America remains as the leading manufacturing nation in the world, with 9% of the American workforce (about 12 million) people employed directly in manufacturing today verses 25% in 1970.

Despite the fact that the US has remained the leading manufacturing nation because our workers are so much more productive, our business’s growth is hampered by the inability to fill open positions.  Our challenge to address an aging workforce is to change the perception of manufacturing employment starting with students.  Too many of our high school students who may not be a fit for four-year college degree are pushed towards colleges and universities when they should be directed towards apprentice and training programs in manufacturing.  We see the National Robotics League and our new NTMA-U on-line training as addressing these pressing needs.

My Theme for 2012 is “Transforming for Competiveness”….your Company, your Chapter, your Industry."  Being competitive means WINNING.  Our businesses can win if we will commit to:

•     Technology

•         Innovation

•     Productivity

•     Efficiency

•     Optimization

•     Continuous improvement

•     Processes and Procedures

•     Lean/Kaizan

•     Flexibility

We are an industry that must be willing to partner and engage our suppliers of equipment, tooling, materials to work with us to achieve the performance demands placed on us by our customers. This is what the MFG Meeting in Orlando was all about, to introduce the metal working industry to each other for the sole purpose of all our success. This collaboration is what will keep American manufacturing number one in the world and our companies competitive.

For our Chapters, we must work together and rally around Training, Advocacy, Technology, and Manufacturing as a future.  We must collaborate with other associations and associate members have a critical mass and speak with one voice.

For our industry, we will transform ourselves or be transformed by others or our customers. Competitiveness is our transformation.  Transformation is our door to increased revenue and profits.  The manufacturing worlds, and the manufacturing world’s customers, have moved on. The question is can our companies move along with them?  I challenge our industry to ACT.  We must unite and rally together for the good of American Manufacturing.

NTMA is that rallying point.

Get involved in your Chapters, and get others in your companies involved in our Chapters, and work together for the good of all… Keep a close eye on, and constantly analyze the transforming industries we serve.  Be an early adopter of change.

As my Dad would say, he learned more about running a business from his involvement in NTMA and solved more shop challenges from information and ideas from his fellow NTMA members.  We both give NTMA credit for much of the success that our families have enjoyed in this industry and would say, our reason for being an NTMA Member was not for NTMA’s success, but it was for our success.

I look forward to working with all of you.